It was Mary Poor’s ninetieth birthday and she was quite content. She sat on the porch of the blue, two-story house that had been her home for the past two years and watched the early morning sunlight turn the boats on the waterfront purple, then pink, then yellow. She had gotten used to this view, to the gentle rhythm of the rocker, to sharing her porch with others her age. She had expected to live out her life at Kiss River, but she knew she was luckier than most to have had sixty-five years under the warmth of the beacon.
She still spoke of the lighthouse to anyone who would listen. Over and over again, she recounted tales of the storms, the wrecks, the sea. She knew she sounded like the others when she rambled on that way, trapped in the past, but she didn’t care. It was a conscious decision she made to allow herself to babble, a privilege that came with age.
The doctor who examined her yesterday had marveled at her keen vision, her fine hearing, and her strength, despite the tortured bone in her hip. Mary had talked politics with the man, showing off. “You’re sharper than I am, Mrs. Poor,” the doctor had said, and Mary was certain he had not been patronizing her.
“So, if I’m in such good shape, why can’t I have a cigarette?” she’d asked him, but he’d only laughed, and slipped his stethoscope into his bag.
Mary rarely let others know just how capable she still was. She wanted to enjoy some of the pleasures of old age, of being taken care of, pampered. She even let Sandy, one of the girls on the staff, cut her short, snow-white hair now, although she could still do it perfectly well herself if she had to.
She tried to keep up with things. She watched the news, television still an amazement to her. She’d had one at Kiss River, but all it ever brought into her house there was static and splintery gray lines. She kept up with the newspaper, too. Right now the Beach Gazette rested on her lap, and when the boats on the waterfront finally lost their color and the show of the sunrise was over, she picked up the paper and began to read. Her favorite part was the crossword puzzle, but she always saved that until last, until she’d read everything else and needed something to work on as she waited for Trudy or Jane to get up and join her on the porch.
She read the front page and then opened the paper. She was folding the page back when she saw the picture: the tall, glittering white brick lighthouse against a dark sky. A little well of pain surfaced briefly in her chest, then subsided. In the corner of the picture she could just make out the northern tip of her old house, her husband Caleb’s family home, the house the Park Service now owned. The headline read, Erosion Threatens Kiss River Lighthouse. There was a byline. Paul Macelli. Mary narrowed her eyes. Paul Macelli? They’d let anybody write about Kiss River these days. She read the article through. A committee had been formed to save the lighthouse. Alec O’Neill was chairman. Mary smiled when she read that. It fit.
She rested the paper on her lap again and thought about Alec O’Neill. She had learned of Annie’s death too late to get to her funeral, and she’d wept, unable to remember the last time she’d cried over a loss. But Annie. A kindred spirit. Like a daughter in a way, although Mary’s own daughter, Elizabeth, had never listened to her with such interest. Mary could tell Annie anything, and Annie had told her all, hadn’t she? “Mary,” she’d said one night, after the fire had burned out and they’d drunk brandy, coffee, “you know me better than anyone in the world.”
Mary had loved her, fiercely, with a lay-down-her-life-for-her sort of love. She thought of that after Annie died. Why couldn’t it have been her instead? She’d lived long enough, while Annie was just beginning, really. In more ways than one. Mary felt that blind sort of love that led her to do the things she did for Annie, to see to Annie’s happiness without bothering to think through the consequences, without stopping to think that what she did might be wrong.
For a while after Annie died, Mary couldn’t imagine going on without her visits to look forward to. She’d seen Annie less since moving here to the old folks’ home, but the younger woman had still come once or twice a week, with gifts more often than not. Things Mary didn’t need, but that was Annie, and Mary would never tell her not to bother. Annie’s visits were shorter here. There were always people around; she watched her words.
It was her last visit that haunted Mary, that stayed in her mind. She told herself Annie was gone now, what did it matter? But Annie had been so distressed that afternoon as she sat with Mary in the living room, surrounded by the other residents of the home. The dimpled smile was gone, and she struggled to hold back tears. Mary had finally taken her up to her bedroom and let her weep, let her talk about what she’d done. Mary had absolved her, like a priest in a confessional. She actually thought of that later, that Annie had died forgiven.
Mary had sent a card to Alec and her children. Sandy took her out to buy it, and she made that girl drive her to four or five card stores before she found one with a white lighthouse on it. She lay awake for one full night trying to decide what to write. She composed long dissertations in her mind on how extraordinary Annie was, how terribly she would miss her, but in the end she wrote something simple, something anyone might write, and sent the card off.
Alec O’Neill. She had never been able to look that man in the eye. “I won’t hurt him,” Annie had said, too many times to count. “I’ll never hurt him.”
Mary looked down at the article again, reading it through once more. They needed historical information on the lighthouse. Incidents. Anecdotes. Soon they would be looking for her. Who would come? Alec O’Neill? Paul Macelli? Or maybe someone from the Park Service. That would be best. If she saw Alec or Paul—well, she sometimes said too much these days. She might tell them more than they wanted to hear.